A battery, which is called a storage battery or a secondary battery, has a characteristic in an easy application according to a product group, excellent preservability, a high energy density, and the like.
Further, the battery attracts attention as an energy supply source for improving an environmentally-friendly characteristic and energy efficiency in that a by-product according to the use of energy is not generated, as well as a primary advantage in that it is possible to decrease the use of fossil fuel.
Accordingly, the battery is universally applied to an electric vehicle, an energy storage system, an uninterruptible power supply system, and the like, as well as a portable device.
Particularly, in the case of the electric vehicle industry, the battery is on the rise as an efficient alternative in an era in which a pollution problem become serious day by day and oil price is high, and in Korea, various businesses have been pushed forward to enter the four world powers in an electric vehicle field by the year of 2020.
Unlike an existing vehicle which obtains driving energy by combusting fossil fuel, the electric vehicle has a technical characteristic in that a power source for driving the vehicle is provided from electric energy stored in a battery, and because of this, the battery within the electric vehicle is considered as a core element influencing a determination on a travelling speed and a travelling distance, as well as a stable operation of the vehicle.
Accordingly, various devices and systems are developed for efficiently operating and appropriately protecting the battery of the electric vehicle, and for example, voltage balancing between cells of the battery, overcharging and overdischarging control, a detection of a swelling phenomenon, and an estimation of a residual capacity have been suggested.
However, like the foregoing technologies, most of the related arts about the battery of the electric vehicle consider only a problem in an electric aspect, accidents that occur in the battery and the electric vehicle due to a physical factor are ignored.
For example, when a minor accident is generated during an operation of the electric vehicle or the electric vehicle travels on the ground having severe unevenness, an accident of disconnecting an electric circuit and the battery within the vehicle may be generated due to an impact, a vibration, and the like transferred to a vehicle body, which causes a sudden stop of the operation of the electric vehicle to lead to a secondary accident, and contains a risk in that an electrical short is generated from the battery, so that a body of a person in the vehicle may get an electric shock.